Name: Andy BechtelFrom: UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United StatesAbout me: I teach editing and writing at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill. I'm interested in new ways to tell news stories and in the ethical and political ramifications of word choices (terrorist surveillance program, domestic spying or something in between?).
I have 12 years of experience in newspaper editing, most recently at The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

I've noticed that Microsoft Word doesn't recognize "blog" and "blogging" as proper words. Here are the suggested replacements for each:

Blog:

Bog

Bloc

Blot

Blob

Blow

Blogging:

Bogging

Logging

Flogging

Clogging

Sogging

The Associated Press is more comfortable with the word. Here's what its Ask the Stylebook site said earlier this year:

AP has found that "blog" is familiar enough to readers now that "Web log" is no longer necessary.

Perhaps Microsoft will catch up with this for the next version of Word. Meanwhile, we can contemplate how to cite blogs in academic papers. The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors and Publishers offers this guidance.

We use blog on first reference, too, but I'm not convinced most of our readers know what a blog is. I have people ask me what a blog is with some frequency. Of course, they are of my gray-haired generation.